


hum hallelujah

by starscry



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Catholic Guilt, Frottage, M/M, Musicians, Shotgunning, Social Media
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:54:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29525325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starscry/pseuds/starscry
Summary: It’s the sheergaudinessof the flier that catches Aymeric’s attention, at first.DRAGONSONG, it reads, the title of the band nigh incomprehensible with the lack of kerning, each syllable tangled tight together in such a way that the entire thing seems to resemble a snarl of tree roots.The dragon is whatreallypiques his interest. Below the labyrinthine lettering, a great wyrm spreads its wings, poised to spew fire on the dragoon below it. It’s not the most artful rendition of a drake Aymeric has ever laid eyes on, bearing an odd resemblance to a muscular skink moreso than a noble creature of myth, but it’s… passable.
Relationships: Aymeric de Borel/Estinien Wyrmblood
Comments: 16
Kudos: 38





	hum hallelujah

**Author's Note:**

> ****PLEASE have your site skins turned on!** this piece has social media components that won't be visible with skins off. 
> 
> for the purpose of this fic, Ishgard is a city located.. _somewhere_ in the modern world. the intro art is done by my amazing friend [tracey!](https://twitter.com/rokudo). the title is taken from [a song by the same name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIUSvVKafhk).

\- - - 

It’s the sheer _gaudiness_ of the flier that catches Aymeric’s attention, at first.

 _DRAGONSONG_ , it reads, the title of the band nigh incomprehensible with the lack of kerning, each syllable tangled tight together in such a way that the entire thing seems to resemble a snarl of tree roots. 

The dragon is what _really_ piques his interest. Below the labyrinthine lettering, a great wyrm spreads its wings, poised to spew fire on the dragoon below it. It’s not the most artful rendition of a drake Aymeric has ever laid eyes on, bearing an odd resemblance to a rather muscular skink moreso than a noble creature of myth, but it’s… passable. 

The bottom of the poster advertises _SHOW TONIGHT!!! 8PM @ THE FORGOTTEN KNIGHT_. Humored, Aymeric pulls out his phone and snaps a picture to send to Lucia; as someone who dabbles in graphic design, he’s sure she’ll be amused by the rather pitiful attempt at it.

Lucia Junius  
  
**Today** 6:15 PM  
Where did you find that?  
Taped to the stoplight in front of the office. Why?  
  
[](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/782150503227588629/811654199557095454/unknown.png)  
I recall you mentioning an Estinien a few times.  


Aymeric reads over the search blurb once, twice, thrice. His old friends. Haurchefant. Ysayle. Hilda.

_Estinien._

The edge of the poster creases beneath his fingers as he clutches it tighter. Runs his thumb over the face of the posterized dragoon, a rueful smile upon his lips. Estinien. He hadn’t seen the other man since they were eighteen. Since they’d parted ways.

How Aymeric misses him.

He’d met Estinien midway through freshman year, when the other boy had abruptly transferred into his school after moving to the city. Even now, Aymeric can only recall scant details about his grim past—orphaned as a boy, taken in by his foster father, Alberic, and inducted into the diocese after Alberic had decided he wanted his ward to attend the same Catholic school he’d gone to. 

Aymeric hadn’t been entirely _aware_ that their class had a new member until he’d stumbled into the sanctuary of the campus church one morning to practice his hymns on the piano for mass, still half-asleep and bleary-eyed, and had found in his usual spot a disheveled boy with at _least_ four dress code violations in the way he wore his uniform. Over the melody he played on his beat-up six string he’d introduced himself as Estinien Wyrmblood, new in town.

He’d been quiet, at first. Had skulked out of sight behind the grand piano and turned his back to Aymeric, continuing to pluck away at his guitar where he couldn’t quite be seen. Then, Aymeric had _also_ begun to play. On the third hymn, Estinien, apparently fed up with the steady stream of Catholic canticles, had spun around and snapped.

“You _like_ playing that bullshit?” he’d barked, calloused fingers stilling his guitar’s strings so he could pick up a sheet of the music Aymeric had arranged on the piano’s music rack and scrutinize it.

Aymeric snatched the paper away, smoothed the rumpled corners out, and set it gently back upon the piano. “Do you have a problem with it?”

Estinien wrinkled his nose. “Doesn’t it get boring playing the same trite _hallelujah, hallelujah_ garbage day-in, day-out?” 

“I suppose it’s not… my _favorite_ type of music to play, but I don’t mind. It allows me to practice.”

“What’re you practicing for? Aiming to become some bigshot pianist?”

Aymeric’s brow had furrowed. He played because it pleased his parents. He practiced because it was expected of him. “Just… to improve.”

“You ever play _not_ for church?”

“At home, yes. Occasionally I perform at recitals.”

The other boy had snorted, knuckles rapping against the scuffed wood of his guitar. “ _Recitals._ What do you play?”

“Schubert. Mozart. Classical music, mostly,” Aymeric replied. “But enough with the twenty questions—what are _you_ doing here?”

“My, uh.. dad. He dropped me off early. Had to go to work. He said I’d be able to practice here until first bell.”

“I suppose. As long as you don’t mind me practicing my ‘trite _hallelujah, hallelujah_ garbage,’ as you so eloquently put it.”

Estinien had snorted derisively at that, but hadn’t put up any resistance. Not ten minutes later, halfway through the Canticle of the Sun, he’d heard Estinien’s chords change as the other boy looked over Aymeric’s shoulder and plucked out a tentative acoustic melody in time with the piano. 

Their friendship had blossomed from there. Every morning, Aymeric would stride into the church to find Estinien sat upon his piano bench, guitar in hand, strumming whatever the punk rock flavor of the day was. Aymeric helped him with his music theory while Estinien shepherded him away from his classical ken, the two sharing earbuds as Estinien played keyboard-heavy synthpop tunes from the eighties for him and expanded Aymeric’s musical repertoire. 

It was _nice_ to finally have someone completely disconnected from the diocesan going-ons, someone who didn’t give a fuck about the rumors of Aymeric’s alleged parentage that had haunted him his entire life and simply took him at face value instead of allowing church gossip to corrupt his opinion. 

Sophomore year, they’d scraped together enough people to form a merry little band. Haurchefant Greystone, a fellow classmate, took up the role of bass player, while Ysayle Dangoulain and Hilda Ware, friends-of-friends from the public school down the street, sang and played drums, respectively. Haurchefant graciously offered up his spacious garage, where they’d gathered (despite Estinien’s early caginess at the thought of playing with so many others).

They’d met up nearly every day after school in that garage to plug in their instruments and spent hours playing covers of songs and, sometimes, attempting to write their own. Aymeric would ferry his keyboard back and forth from his house to what eventually became his second home, the weight of the padded nylon bag slung over his shoulder a familiar comfort and a promise of an afternoon spent in the company of those he held dearest. Sometimes, they’d play so late into the night, he would awaken at his keyboard to Estinien gently shaking his shoulder, picking him bodily up, and buckling him into the passenger seat of Alberic’s beat-up van to drive him home. 

Back then, it had been nothing more than a gratifying hobby. An extracurricular to tack onto his university application, a way to indulge his musical inclinations and pass the time after school with people he loved, instead of going back to his empty house to practice the same songs on the piano for the umpteenth time alone in the frigid foyer until his parents returned late at night from work. 

It had been a temporary escape from the crushing weight of the expectations put upon him. One he’d been forced to forego when the time came for him to step forth into adulthood, no longer able to entertain his childish fantasies of performing on an arena stage alongside his closest friends, fingers flitting over keys in time with the roar of a rock ballad instead of the stilted melodies of Chopin and Bach. 

But as all things must come to an end, so, too, did their nameless band. The summer after graduation, they began drifting apart, life taking them each down a different path. Aymeric was shepherded into a prestigious university and thenceforth to law school, while Estinien took Alberic’s old van and cut town to do god-knows-what. 

The memories continue to resurface, old hurts and happiness no longer raw after fourteen years’ time. God, he _misses_ his friends.

Aymeric delicately folds up the Dragonsong flier and slips it into the pocket of his suit before tapping out a text to Lucia.

Lucia Junius  
  
[](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/782150503227588629/811654199557095454/unknown.png)  
I recall you mentioning an Estinien once.  
Cancel my dinner plans, if you will. I’ve something important to attend to.

\- - - 

Whatever Aymeric had expected the venue to be like, it wasn’t _this._

It’s a small, club-sized building packed with _hundreds_ of people, all shoved together into an open floor in front of a cramped stage. Aymeric steps one foot inside and is immediately thrown to the wolves, forced to squeeze between sweat-slick bodies to find a small niche for himself at the back where he can _breathe_ for a second. He regrets not having Googled the place before simply arriving, erroneous in his assumption that there would, perhaps, be seats and order and maybe a bit of fresh air to inhale.

The place smells of stale sweat and cigarette smoke and cheap beer in plastic cups, the stench clinging to Aymeric’s suit and pervading his every sense. Brilliant stage lights strobe out over the crowd, illuminating the roil of bodies in stammering flashes and catching on the low haze of machine-made fog that wavers over the crowd like a cloud cover. Aymeric can scarcely hear himself think, the pump of a pulsating bassline and thunderous crash of drumsticks against cymbals over the roaring voices of the crowd as they sing along with Ysayle a dizzying combination of noises.

From the back, he can faintly see the band members over the ocean of fans that separates him from the stage. Ysayle wears a flowing, too-long tee with the emblem of some eighties rock band Aymeric faintly recalls emblazoned upon it, her guitar hung loosely over her front as she clutches the mic in both hands and croons into it. Beside her, Haurchefant, sporting a nondescript yellow hoodie and jeans, spiritedly strums his bass, a beaming grin upon his face that’s echoed by Hilda behind her drumset, dressed in a familiar brown jacket and red scarf. 

Estinien stands off to the side of the stage, pointedly apart from the others; his hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail, bangs shadowing his eyes as he stares down at his instrument, fingers flying over the neck of his guitar. Aymeric gives him an appreciative once-over, trailing his eyes over the worn t-shirt, ripped pants, leather jacket, and combat boots, all in various shades of gray and black. At the base of his throat a chain necklace glistens, the lock charm hung at its cusp nestled in the divot between his collarbones.

Where his bandmates strut about the stage, full of vim and vigor as they put on a show for their clamoring fans, Estinien merely stands in his corner like a brooding beast, not even deigning to look at the (surprisingly, Aymeric thinks) several members of the crowd that cry out his name and attempt to get his attention. 

By the fourth song in the setlist, Aymeric manages to push his way forward to the barricade, sweat sticking his coiffed hair to his forehead and his suit now in desperate need of a thorough dry-cleaning.

Then, Haurchefant, apparently out of picks from his own mic stand, saunters over to Estinien and steals one of the many that the guitarist hasn’t yet deigned to toss into the audience. He takes it between thumb and forefinger and flicks it out near Aymeric’s section of the crowd, eyes following to see where it lands. Aymeric has to sidestep a boy who all but attempts to bodyslam his way through the crowd to catch it, falling to the ground as he does so; onstage, he sees Haurchefant chuckle, watching the fervent fan stand up and dust himself off, the coveted pick clenched in his palm.

Haurchefant’s eyes trail away from the boy, looking out over the roiling storm of bodies, and his gaze snags on Aymeric, eyes going wide and a beaming grin breaking out upon his face. 

Estinien seems to follow the bassist’s gaze, his eyes eventually meeting Aymeric’s in the crowd. A beat passes, his fingers stilling on the strings of his guitar for an inhaled breath’s time. Something flits through Estinien’s heavy-lidded gaze; whether it’s the lighting or some unknowable emotion, Aymeric can’t tell. 

Then, there’s a break in the backing instrumentals, the lull of Ysayle’s voice in the microphone the only sound over the clamor of the crowd. Estinien holds Aymeric’s gaze for a moment longer, taking the time to slowly shuck his leather jacket and toss it to the side of the stage. Underneath, the sleeves are cut haphazardly off his ratty tee, the sides slit so low Aymeric can see the taut lines of his defined stomach when he bends over his instrument, the sweat trailing over the divots of his hips and soaking into the dark fabric, and the glint of something silver. 

Beneath the harsh lights of the stage, nothing can compare to _him_. Aymeric feels the stutter of his heart beating in time with the up-tempo music, the thrumming pitch of Haurchefant’s bass and Hilda’s drums pounding in his head. His fingers clench against the barricade pole, half-moon nails biting into warm steel that _vibrates_ like everything else in the venue. 

He stays like that through the rest of the setlist, snapping out of his reverie when the band begins to play their encore and Haurchefant bids the crowd a very enthusiastic good night, thanking them all for coming out. Time flits by after that; Aymeric finds himself following the gaggle of admirers who park themselves outside of the venue, awaiting the reappearance of the band in hopes of getting their merchandise signed. Once their enthusiasm fizzles out and the band shows no signs of rearing their heads, Aymeric is left there alone. Waiting.

\- - -

He waits for Estinien outside the stagedoor for a half hour, anxiety roiling in his gut. _What if he doesn’t_ want _to see you?_ his spiteful mind whispers. Estinien had never returned any of his texts all those years. There must’ve been a reason, Aymeric thinks. Their friendship had merely been one born of circumstance, two wayward boys thrown together by coincidence.

He smooths his sweating palms over the hem of his now-rumpled suit jacket and exhales, pushing the thoughts to the back of his mind. Regardless of Estinien’s potential feelings toward him, Aymeric will be full glad to speak with his dearest friend for the first time in over a decade, if only for a moment.

 _Finally,_ the door swings open with an enthusiastic smack of metal against cinderblock. Aymeric hears him happily humming before he actually sees the man, but the cadence is unmistakably _Haurchefant_. Ysayle and Hilda dog their bandmate’s steps, Hilda’s arm thrown over Ysayle’s shoulder in a casual embrace as they discuss something in a hushed whisper.

Haurchefant spots him first, stopping in his tracks and blinking for a fleeting moment before breaking out into a wide grin and bounding over like a delighted dog. “Aymeric!” he cries. Before Aymeric can quite register what’s going on, Haurchefant has swept him up in an enthusiastic, if sweaty, hug. “It’s been so long!”

“Entirely _too_ long since we last saw each other, my friend,” Aymeric replies. “I’m glad to see you’re all doing well for yourselves. That was quite the show you put on.”

“You liked it?”

“ _Loved_ it. Seems the crowd did as well, if my current hearing loss from all of the enthusiastic screaming is any indication to go by.”

Haurchefant gives him a good-natured grimace. “No getting around that, unfortunately. I think I’ve grown harder of hearing in the past few years than my father has in sixty.”

Hilda and Ysayle sneak up alongside their bandmate, both embracing Aymeric in turn. Hilda claps him gently on one of his cheeks, thumb pressing in against his cheekbone. “If it ain’t little Aymeric!” she chirps, a wily grin upon her lips. “Look at you! You’ve quite grown out of all that baby fat, haven’t’cha?”

Aymeric gives her a stilted chuckle, long used to Hilda’s good-natured teasing. “And you’ve become quite the dashing lady, yourself.”

“Aw. You old flatterer.” Hilda threads her fingers through Ysayle’s, tugging at the other woman’s arm after she gives Aymeric a brief nod and hello of her own. “Would love to chat more, but we’ve packing up to do. God knows _Estinien_ won’t be of any help.”

“Speaking of, where is he?” Ysayle asks, brow furrowed.

Hilda shrugs. “Your bet’s as good as mine. Prob’ly skulked off to scrounge up some food and have a smoke.” She gives Aymeric a sympathetic look. “If I find him, I’ll drag his ass over. Feel free to have a sniff around the venue if y’want. He’s bound to turn up somewhere. When you do find him, let us know. We all have _quite_ a bit of catchin’ up t’do.”

“I’m sure he’ll be delighted to see you,” Haurchefant adds, beaming at Aymeric and giving him a quick thumbs-up.

The three trot off to attend to their post-show duties while Aymeric takes Hilda up on her offer, slipping into the now-empty venue to hunt for his friend. Inside, it reeks of stale sweat and alcohol. He wrinkles his nose, covering it with the heel of his palm while he climbs onto the stage and peeks around behind the backstage curtain and follows the long hallway connected to it. It’s not hard to find Estinien, after that; he follows the scent of smoke to a stairwell and finds his friend hunched over on the steps, the batteries of the nearby smoke alarm removed and dumped haphazardly at his feet. 

“That habit will kill you some day, you know,” Aymeric chides, sidling up to lean against the railing.

The cigarette between Estinien’s lips dangles there for a moment as he stares up, brows raised. “Aymeric?” he murmurs.

“In the flesh.”

A silent moment draws on between them as each looks at the other, time frozen in a sliver. He waits for Estinien to leave, or, perhaps, to tell him to fuck off, the words never come.

Instead, Estinien stands, flicks his cigarette to the ground and snuffs it out with the toe of his boot, and claps Aymeric on the shoulder, a ghost of a smile on his lips. 

Aymeric can’t help wrapping him up in a hug. Fourteen years of distance and pining for his errant friend and now _relief_ broil within him. He feels Estinien card a hand through the hair at the back of his neck, fingers scrabbling for purchase; in a rare moment of intimacy and vulnerability, the other man presses his face to Aymeric’s neck and just _exhales_. Against his flesh, Aymeric can feel the faint curve of Estinien’s lips. A true smile, tucked away. _Oh,_ how Aymeric has longed for him

“I’ve missed you so much,” Aymeric murmurs.

“Missed you, too,” his friend replies, voice strangled. Aymeric, realizing how tight he’s been hugging Estinien, releases his friend and takes a step back, straightening out his suit.

The other man gives him a once-over, a single brow quirked. “A suit to a concert? _Really,_ Borel?”

“I came straight from work!” 

“God, you haven’t changed one bit. Still so damn proper.”

“Neither have you,” Aymeric retorts, gesturing to the myriad holes in Estinien’s muscle tank. “I distinctly recall you owning this shirt fourteen years ago. I think it’s time for a wardrobe update.”

Estinien rolls his eyes. “You offering to pay? That suit of yours looks pretty pricy.” He rubs the material of one rumpled lapel between thumb and forefinger. “What’re you doing that lets you afford something like this?”

“I work as a defense attorney at a local firm. Nothing too exciting.”

“Sounds fancy.” 

“At times,” Aymeric replies, a diplomatic non-answer. Desiring to steer the conversation pointedly away from his current employment, he asks, “how long are you in town?”

“Just tonight and tomorrow. We leave Sunday morning. Gotta drive down to Dragonhead for a small-time festival we were invited to.”

“Sounds exciting.”

Estinien snorts. “Three days of freezing my ass off on an outdoor stage in the Highlands and playing second billing for the Crystal Braves. Can’t fucking wait,” he deadpans. 

“So little time… We’d best make the most of it, I suppose. Are you hungry?”

“Fucking _starved_.”

Aymeric clasps his hands together. “Wonderful.”

They duck out to a 24-hour diner a few blocks away from the venue, Aymeric dogging Estinien’s heels as his friend makes a beeline for the nearest table once inside and orders several burgers and a plate of fries for them to share. Estinien is nearly slavering by the time the waitress brings their order.

He grabs the first of the burgers and takes a gratuitous bite before Aymeric even has the chance to remove his food from the tray. “God, shows like those make me hungry enough to demolish an entire damn buffet on my own.”

Aymeric quirks a brow, watching Estinien scarf down his first burger and move onto the second. “I can see that,” he replies drily. “Fascinating how you scarcely seem to breathe between bites.”

“Hah. Keep it up with the snide remarks and I’ll eat your dinner too, Borel.”

With a fond chuff of laughter, Aymeric picks up a fry and slowly eats it. “So, you must tell me—how is it that the band got back together?”

“It was Haurchefant’s doing, really. He called me when he found out I was working in Dragonhead for a bit and said he’d treat me to a free meal. Found out as soon as I got there that what he _really_ wanted was to play together again, for old times’ sake. Already had the girls on board before he hit me up.” Estinien shrugs. “The rest is history, I suppose. Pay was terrible, at first, but it was better than the other shit job I’d been working. I guess you must’ve been busy. Missed the call, maybe.”

Aymeric can’t quite imagine Estinien shoved inside a van full of instruments and other people, driving from place to place to play. Time must’ve tempered him at least a bit, he supposes.

“I _do_ recall Haurchefant reaching out some time ago about a meeting of some sort, but I was, unfortunately, preoccupied at the time. A pity.” 

“Having you there would’ve at least made all these years more tolerable.” There’s no heat behind his words; despite Estinien’s knife-sharp exterior, he’s loyal to a fault where those he considers friends are concerned.

“Music is in my past, unfortunately. I’m glad to see it is still in _your_ future.”

The other man’s lips press in a thin, silent line, brows furrowing at Aymeric’s statement.

“The obvious aside, what’ve you been doing since last we saw each other?” Aymeric presses, attempting to fill the silence that stagnates between them.

Estinien shrugs. Tears the edge of a ketchup packet off with his teeth and squirts its contents unceremoniously onto the tray paper before dragging four fries through the sauce. He shoves them into his mouth with the voracity of a starved beast. “Worked here and there. Got out of the city, left to go see other places.”

“Anywhere good?”

“Every suburban shithole is the same,” Estinien snorts, a dismissive non-answer. 

Aymeric is familiar with this song and dance—he presses, Estinien dodges. On and on, until he manages to pin his mulish friend. He’s missed it. “There must’ve been at least _one_ decent place.”

“Drove out to a town up in the mountains after I first left. Stayed there for a bit, off the grid. It wasn’t… the _worst_. Of the lot I lived in, at least. Better than Ishgard.”

Aymeric rolls his shirtsleeves up so as not to accidentally drag them through the quagmire of ketchup Estinien has managed to create in the midst of the table and primly picks up a fry. “Is that why you never responded to my goodbye text?”

“I’m shit at goodbyes. You know that.”

 _But it still hurt,_ Aymeric thinks, though he doesn’t speak it. Saying such would only serve to guilt his friend for a fault long since forgiven. He never quite had it in himself to fully blame Estinien for up and leaving Ishgard when he finally got the chance, leaving behind his broken childhood and setting out upon the heels of the unknown. God knows Aymeric would have loved to join him, had he been given a choice.

“Plus,” Estinien continues, fishing his phone from his pocket and sliding it across the table, “accidentally broke the little bastard the day I left. Hard to work it like this.”

Aymeric winces when he sees Estinien’s old flip phone from highschool, its screen irreparably shattered and a few buttons missing. There’s a soft clack as something knocks gently against the side.

“You kept it?” Aymeric asks, incredulity lacing his words. He stares down at the familiar phone charm—a tiny, time-scuffed dragon he’d won from a capsule machine for Estinien, a memento from the day Aymeric had left for college. 

In retrospect, it had been a childish parting gift, a shitty piece of plastic to remember him by. He’d half expected Estinien to throw the damn thing in a drawer and forget about it. The blue strap that had once looped through the charm has been replaced by an elastic band that looks relatively new, gently tied through a loop at the crux of the phone. Aymeric trails a wistful thumb over the empty socket that had once held a faux gemstone eye. 

“Of course. Can... still tell the time, at the very least,” Estinien mumbles, very obviously trying to save face by pretending he’s talking about the device and not the charm attached to it. He pointedly doesn’t meet Aymeric’s inquiring gaze and instead takes a bite out of his meal.

“You don’t have a newer phone?”

Estinien quirks a brow. “What would I need one for?” he mumbles, mouth full of burger.

“..To message your friends.”

“Don’t have enough to bother.”

 _That much is obvious,_ Aymeric thinks. “What about the band? How do you keep in contact with them?”

The other man shrugs. “They know how to find me if they need to. Which they don’t.”

Aymeric nods contemplatively, as if he understands whatever the hell Estinien means by that. 

“This place really hasn’t changed much since I left, has it?” Estinien asks.

Another nod. “Time hasn’t quite stood still, but Ishgard has always been a bit… _resistant_ to change.”

The other man snorts derisively. “That much is obvious. We drove by the school on our way into the city. Saw this year’s crop of miserable kids in their godforsaken uniforms. Poor bastards.”

“ _We_ were those poor bastards, upon a time,” Aymeric replies.

There’s a wistful lilt to the hum of acknowledgment Estinien gives. The other man falls silent, his second, half-eaten burger momentarily forgotten in his hand as he stares past Aymeric, gaze distant. 

Aymeric can’t help letting his eyes wander. It’s been _so long_. He hadn’t realized just how much his companion had changed in the fourteen years since they’d last seen each other. Estinien has grown into himself, no longer the gangly, coltish youth he’d once been. High, hollowed cheekbones frame eyes rimmed with exhaustion, the lines of age etched into his flesh making every grimace or otherwise disgruntled expression all the more potent.

His eyes flit down to the back of Estinien’s right hand, trailing over the familiar time-whitened scar that fishhooks around a knuckle. It’s an echo of the scrappy youth the other man had once been—always getting into fights on Aymeric’s behalf, always willing to strike the cruel teens that echoed the hushed rumors about the archbishop’s illegitimate spawn that their parents doubtless whispered at home. 

By the time he’d started high school, Aymeric had been called a bastard and ostracized by enough vicious classmates that he’d simply learned to take it on the chin, preferring to fight his battles with words and uncompromising patience. Estinien favored a far more _direct_ approach, cutting his knuckles on the teeth of those that dared spit insults his friend’s way, and receiving more than his fair share of Saturday detentions served in the rectory for his impetuous violence. 

An unbidden grin dances upon Aymeric’s lips at the memory. To others, Estinien has always been a wild thing, teeth bared and liable to snap open their yielding throats. To Aymeric, he’s a steadfast friend, the flashing of his fangs little more than a smile.

“I’ve missed you,” Aymeric murmurs, drawing Estinien from his reverie. “Really. Things haven’t been the same since you left.”

“Not much to miss. I left. Life went on. You went to your prestigious university and now you get to put on airs and lounge about with your six-figure salary. _Which,_ ” he continues before Aymeric has a chance to interject, “I don’t resent you for in the slightest. I’m happy for you. You’ve done _great_ for yourself, Aymeric. Being able to help others like this, to defend them when they’re most vulnerable—it’s what you always talked about doing when we were just kids. I just wish I’d been able to witness you rise to such heights.”

“I as well,” Aymeric replies. “To have you here all these years would’ve been a comfort. You left a gap that nobody else could ever quite fill, my friend.”

“Are you implying that you tried to fill it?”

“No, no! Of course not,” he quickly backpedals, but across the table, Estinien merely barks out a laugh and shoves another bite of burger into his mouth.

“I’m just fucking with you, Aymeric. I’m glad you moved on with your life. I never expected you to wait around for me, regardless of our friendship.”

Aymeric pensively drags a fry through the slough of ketchup in the center of the table, tracing nonsensical patterns along its surface. “I did, you know,” he murmurs. Wistful. “For a full year, I hoped you might change your mind. Come back to Ishgard. That I might have the chance to see you once more.” He doesn’t admit it, but he walked by Alberic’s guitar shop every day for that year hoping to catch a glimpse of Estinien, instrument in hand, through the window. 

Another bout of silence. Estinien’s fingers curl against the laminate of the tabletop. “I’m sorry,” he says, the familiar gravel of his voice so soft, Aymeric is caught off guard by such a simple statement. 

“You’ve nothing to be sorry for.” Aymeric reaches across the table, placing his hand over Estinien’s in a reassuring gesture. His friend meets his eyes, unmistakable regret brimming in his gaze. “All we can do now is make up for the time we lost.”

Aymeric promptly polishes off the rest of the fries in his neat little pile and waves the waitress over to grab their check. “Starting,” he says, pulling out a billfold and slipping her more than enough to cover their midnight meal, “with this.”

Estinien fishes a few crumpled bills from his back pocket that look like they somehow managed to survive a turn through the washing machine and slides them across the table. “You don’t have to cover my half. I _do_ have money, you know.”

With a quirked brow, Aymeric overtly gives Estinien a once-over, taking in the threadbare state of his shirt and jeans and the scuffed leather of his jacket. “Could have fooled me.”

The other man gives him a justifiably indignant look at that, and Aymeric raises both of his palms in a deferential gesture, a cheshire grin upon his lips. “Joking, joking. Please, I simply wanted to treat my best friend to a meal. Allow me to indulge that desire, at the very least.”

“Fine,” Estinien relents. The chair creaks as he leans back in it, arms crossing over his chest. “But I’m buying tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“After the show. We can go anywhere you’d like.”

“ _Anywhere_ , hm?”

Estinien grits his teeth, eyeing the paltry sum of bills still resting between them on the table. “Within reason, of course,” he adds.

“You don’t have any… band duties?”

“Are you so eager to be rid of me again?” Estinien asks. There’s no heat behind his words; merely a jesting tone. 

“Not at all,” Aymeric swears. “Merely ensuring I’ll have your undivided attention for the night.”

“Wouldn’t give you anything less.”

Unbidden, a flush rises to Aymeric’s cheeks as anticipation for their next rendezvous simmers within him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'll have the final chapter out soon! if you'd like to talk estimeric, you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/feywilde) or in the [book club.](https://discord.gg/enabling-debauched-xivfic) o/


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